Planning and Organizing Web Content

Planning and organizing web content will be one of your first significant steps to build a website after you've decided what type of website to build and registered your domain name.

Before we move on to content building, we need to talk about content planning. This is an important task that often gets overlooked until you are well into the process of writing and publishing your website content.

Here are some basic steps to get you started planning and organizing web content:

Navigation

What will be the primary "parent" topics in the navigation of your site. What content will go "beneath" the primary topics.

Using a spreadsheet or mapping software, create a map of your site. Putting it together on paper or in electronic format makes it much easier. You can get a visual of your goals.

How Big Will Your Website Be?

If you're website will have more than 10-15 pages, put navigation at the top so the visitor knows where they are and how to get back to the previous pages with ease.

What Kind of Content

Are you struggling with what content your website will contain? Take a look at a competitor's website and pretend you are a visitor. What content is working for them and what isn't. What part of the competitors' websites are appealing? Using competitors' websites as a guide can help you build your website around a similar theme.

However, absolutely do not copy your content from another website. It's called plagiarism and it's illegal. You wouldn't want someone to do that to you, don't do it to others.

When a user searches the web, they are looking for something specific. They will use one of the major search engines like Yahoo, Google, MSN, Dogpile or any other search engine. When searching, they enter a phrase or what it's referred to in SEO - a long tail keyword phrase.

Your content is of no use to anyone if it's not read.

To be found by the search engines, you optimize web content by incorporating the long tail keyword phrases that are use by a visitor doing a search.

When incorporating the keywords into your content, it's extremely important to avoid keyword stuffing.

Keyword stuffing is adding the same keyword to the page so many times it becomes "unnatural". Add the keyword phrases to your web content where it appears "natural" and flows with the rest of the content.

Optimizing all of your pages is important.

Weave in different long tail keyword phrases on each page. By doing this, your pages are optimized for getting targeted website traffic from user's who may use different keywords for their search.

Keyword Placement

If you're unsure about keyword placement, find a website content analyzer such as Cleverstat.

I don't use Cleverstat or any other keyword placement tool because I host my website with Site Build It.

Site Build It comes with a content analyzer that's included in the hosting package.

With each page you build, you run the analyze it tool to ensure all of your "on-page Search Engine criteria" is met. (Search Engine criteria ie: proper keyword placement in the title, description, headline, body, copy....etc.

You're only job is to deliver the quality content, Site Build It does the rest for you. It saves loads of time and is easy to use.

In summary, planning and organizing your web content will be an important step to build a successful business website. Planning and organizing your web content before you build a website will make your life much easier later.